Mark Stryker

Interesting topic. In the early '90s, when I was working for the South Bend Tribune, my first newspaper job, I wrote a story about comedy records that was prompted by a rash of reissues from Robert Klein, David Steinberg, Eddie Murhphy. National Lampoon, Lenny Bruce, Brooks/Reiner and some others. It was more or less a result of the compact disc boom and not a precursor to a renaissance of any kind, but it was an opportunity to look at the development of the genre. Some of the details below are cribbed from that story from (gulp) 1992. As Jim suggests, the modern era started in the '50s with Sahl, Bruce, Berman -- the result of an interesting confluence of the emergence of the long-playing LP and a new wave of sophisticated comedians of various stripes that captured the stirrings of a backlash against the social and political conformity of the era. Sahl's "The Future Lies Ahead" (Verve) from 1958 was ground zero, the first spoken-word comedy LP taped in front of a live audience (the hungry i in San Francisco, of course) -- though I think a bootleg Sahl recording may have been released previously. Berman had the first true hit, "Inside Shelley Berman" (Verve) entering the Billboard Top. 40 in April 1959, peaking at No. 2 for five weeks and staying in the top 40 for 46 weeks and the top 150 for more than two years. By July 16, 1961, there were more than a dozen comedy albums in the top 150, half of them in the top 40. I talked to Bob Newhart, one of my great heroes -- never forget how slyly subverse and prescient early pieces like "The Retirement Party" and "Abe Lincoln" were or the inspired brilliance of, say, the one-sided phone conversation with Abner Doubleday about the invention of baseball. Anyway, Newhart said some interesting things about those days, starting with the fact that the take-my-wife-please aesthetic of the earlier generation of comedians didn't appeal to the college crowd who bought records: "They'd buy our records and they'd get pizza and a six-pack and they'd sit around somebody's living room and that was their nightclub. And we were all dealing with areas they were concerned about. They always called the '50s the 'dead '50s' but I always thought there was a lot of revolt and anti-system feeling. I don't think everybody rolled over and played dead. God knows Lenny was dealing with issues and Mike and Elaine with the telephone company routine and other larges monoliths and I was attacking the corporation -- we were talking to their concerns." Newhart's "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart," released in early 1960, was a pop culture landmark, selling more than 700,000 copies, holding the No. 1 spot on the Billboard pop charts for 14 weeks and winning the Grammy for Album of the Year. Newhart told me that it was selling so fast at one point that Warner Bros. ran out of record jackets and sold thousands in plain white sleeves with IOU's for the jackets. As an aside, Newhart famously had never worked a true club until the week in Houston where the record was taped. He was a real neophyte. The only material he had was what was on the record, so on the first night, when he finished his first set and the people were cheering and going nuts, the MC/owner at the club told him, "You gotta go back out there and do an encore" and Newhwart said, "I don't have any more," and the guy practically pushed him back on stage and Newhart looked at the crowd and said, "Which one would you like to hear again?") When "The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back" was released later in 1960, it reached No. 1 and for a while Newhart held both the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, a feat not equaled until Guns N Roses did it in the early '90s. Newhart later was quoted saying, "Well, you always hate to lose a record but at least it went to a friend." The intensity of the comedy record craze cooled after the Kennedy assanation but the genre remained a force until the late '70s and early '80s, a key part of the public profiles of Cosby, Pryor, Carlin, Klein, Steve Martin (first to achieve platinum sales for "Let's Get Small," Cheech/Chong (ugh). For folks like Pryor and Carlin it was a way of documenting material that they, to paraphrase Carlin, couldn't say on televison. What killed the genre was the rise of stand-up shows on cable TV, which became ubiquitous in the '80s, and the HBO concert specials in which comedians could world uncensored. Still, some folks continued to do well in the CD era. Dice Clay (double ugh), Adam Sandler, Chris Rock and the Blue-Collar guys like Jeff Foxworthy sold a lot of product. and records were still an outlet for an underground guy like Bill Hicks. I mentioned in another thread recently a book called "Laughter on Record: A Complete Discography," by Warren Debenham, published by Scarecrow Press in 1988. http://www.amazon.co...74614800&sr=1-1 It's quite remarkable. 4,367 listings -- from A&P Players' "I Love Jimmy Carter, Jimy Carter" (A&P AP-1001) to Ziegfeld's "Ziegfeld Girl." (C.I.F. 3006; two comedy cuts). It's also indexed by subject, which is interesting. The book doesn't include CDs and it's not annotated, but if you're interested in knowing what's out there, it has it all. Anyway, onward.

Beethoven, 32 Piano Sonatas (complete). Claudio Arrau, piano. Philips, 14 LPs. Mint condition. $8 (57 cents per LP!). Dearborn Music, Dearborn, MI (suburban Detroit).

Horace Silver, "That Healin' Feelin'" (Blue Note). Mint condition, $6, vintage cothing/emphemera store, Royal Oak, MI (suburban Detroit).

Like I said, similarity is not the same as direct influence. Sure, Herbie's relentlessly linear, a cappella right hand lines here may rhyme with Tristano, but the sources of Herbie's playing by 1967 are so integrated and include, as much as anything, four years of nightly experimentation with these players in this repertoire, that to draw a straight line to Tristano as an unacknowledged prime influence, in the absence hard evidence, is fanciful speculation. If looking for a direct link, it makes more sense to tie this to earlier Bill Evans solos where there's a similar linear quality and where he leaves his left hand at his side for a while -- "Oleo" from "Everybody Digs Bill Evans" comes to mind. On another front, Herbie's approach here certainly arose in the context of playing in such a harmonically ambiguous universe, where marking harmony/form with his left hand makes little sense. If you want to argue that Tristano helped create a sound that entered into the bloodstream of jazz and that at a certain point became so much a part of the DNA of the music that it filtered subconsciously into all kinds of places, including Herbie Hancock, well, that's a different issue -- though I'm not sure how far down this road I personally would take it. But that's more plausible than saying that Hancock's prime influence was Tristano, but he has never acknowledged it because he has selective amnesia, stemming largely from a personal/psychological hang-up over the fact that Tristano was a white SOB. Plus, even if there's a link of any sort, it only rears its head in this one area of Hancock's playing. It doesn't account for his approach to harmony, the blues, bebop, comping, funk or anything else. Did Herbie ever hear Tristano live? Did he ever listen to the records?

Sorry, but to call Tristano Herbie's "prime" influence based on a certain similarity that perhaps only you happen to hear -- in the absence of literally one shred of hard evidence that Herbie seriously checked out Tristano -- is silly. I'm not saying there might not actually be some rhyme in the conception, but that's not at all the same as influence, let alone prime influence. Also, the racial thing doesn't make any sense given that Herbie has from day 1 acknowledged Bill Evans as both an influence and hero, and for what it's worth, also said he was later influenced by Chick Corea. Herbie has been interviewed a zillion times and people he's worked with, friends and enemies, have been interviewed a zillion times about him and not once can I ever recall anyone linking him to Tristano to the degree you suggest. Again, I'm not saying drawing parallels is out of line; I'm saying influence is another matter. I'm with Jim: if there's any Tristano at all in Herbie, it comes via Evans. And I would amend Jim's list of Herbie's early influences to also include Ahmad Jamal, Horace Silver, Bud Powell and Ravel -- Herbie's great accomplishment was to take all of those previous strands and weave them into a new template.

We respect to No. 1, I think you're misreading Burton. He's refering not to Bird's playing but the sound of the entire group, and here I would agree with him. It took several years for rhythm sections to fully match the fluidity of Bird, Dizzy and Bud in the new style. As for for No. 2, what evidence is there that Herbie studied Lennie Tristano and that he was his prime influence?

No time to add comment but here's an article by Kahn from 2000 that address the topic of influence, immediate, gradual and otherwise, with especially interesting quotes from Herbie Hancock and Gary Burton. http://jazztimes.com/articles/20304-miles-davis-kind-of-blue-blues-clues

The two that I find myself going back to most are "Merry-Go-Round," which has great, diverse material, a band that swells from a trio up to an octet and fine, focused studio playing from Liebman, Grossman,Farrell, Corea, Hammer -- one of my favorite Elvin-led sessions from any period. The other is "Live at the Lighthouse," which captures the two-tenor working quartet (Liebman, Grossman, Perla) really going for it in a club; Elvin sounds like a miracle and it's a strong document of the first wave of young, post-Coltrane tenors.

Hey, thanks for the response and digging up the old thread.

Anybody know the details surrounding the English lyric for the song "Dindi" in the version that Sinatra sings on Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim" from 1967. The music was written by Jobim and references seem to indicate that the original lyrics were written by Aloysio de Oliveira and that English lyrics were added by Ray Gilbert. But it's unclear if Gilbert's lyrics were original or a translation of Oliveira and its further unclear if the English that Sinatra is singing is Gilbert, Gilbert's translation of Oliveira or somebody else's translation of Oliveira. Thanks.

I unfortunately let the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Mosaic box elude me, and while I own all the original LPs, I find myself now interested in the Mosaic re-masterings (which I have yet to hear), because of the removal of artificial reverberation that I'm sure has been much discussed here in other threads. I'm posting here because I have a few specific questions: Are the single CD issues that came out on Blue Note of "Consummation," "Live at the Village Vanguard," "Central Park North," etc. remastered on the Mosaic model, sans reverb? Anybody have strong opinions one way or the other whether these are worth it, whether, in other words, removing the reverb qualifies as "revelatory"? Finally, did "Monday Night" and the the first Solid State LP ever come out on individual CDs?

You can not imagine how deflating that call is here at the epicenter. Oh, man.

Big topic here, and I agree with much of Jim's earlier analysis, so I'll try and keep it brief. I love the swingers, but put a gun to my head and I'd choose the ballads. And while I prefer the melancholy mood of "Wee Small Hours" to "Only the Lonely" (both are masterpieces, of course) I've decided after many years that "Close to You" is my absolute favorite for the conversational intimacy of the setting with the Hollywood String Quartet, the incredible liquid, viola quality of Sinatra's voice at its absolute peak of control and expression, and the fresh, beautifully constructed songs like "Couldn't Sleep a Wink," "Blame It On My Youth," "P.S. I Love You," "With Every Breath I Take," etc. Anybody that doesn't know this album needs to find a copy as soon as possible. Really. As far as the swingers go, I think Jim is right that Sinatra becomes most comfortable with jazz in the '60s. Having said that, however, for me, Sinatra sounds best when he is slightly hipper than his accompaniment rather than the other way around. That's why when it comes to "rhythm" numbers, I have long preferred "Songs for Swinging Lovers," "Swinging Affair," "Ring-a-Ding-Ding," etc. to the LPs with Basie. Plus, I always thought he wasn't in the greatest vocal shape on the Sands recordings. (One digression: Bill Kirchner wrote in a discussion over at Doug Ramsey's blog a while back that he always considered "Ring-a-Ding-Ding" (late 1960) to be Sinatra's bebop album because Johnny Mandel's charts incorporated certain modern ideas that Riddle-May, who were from a slightly older generation, did not, and because the band on the album included a bunch of West Coast jazzers, among them Joe Maini, Bud Shank, Frank Rosolino, etc. In any case, that's a tremendous album. Very underrated, as is "Sinatra and Swingin' Brass" from 1962 with Neal Hefti charts.) Here are some interesting clips. Sinatra appeared with Basie at the Hollywood Palace for a TV show in '65 and he and the band are incredible here -- far stronger than the Sands, the earlier LPs with Basie or the '65 concert in St. Louis. More of this used to be on Youtube but lots of it appears to have been removed. There was an especially interesting take on "Too Marvelous for Words" which seems to have been an unrecorded Quincy Jones chart. (He's conducting.) This clip has a Basie instrumental and then "Fly Me To the Moon." Wish the rest was available somewhere. Two early jazz tunes: 1946 with the Metronome All-Stars (Cole, Hawkins, Carney, Hodges, Shavers and more) with one of two takes of "Sweet Loraine." 1951 or so on TV -- "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm." This is really intriguing to me, because it seems to capture the nascent beginnings of the grown-up tom cat approach to swinging standards that defined the upcoming Capitol era. It's almost like he's inventing it on the spot. Lots of signature moments -- in the third A section of the first chorus he connects the line "So I will weather the storm/what do I care" without a breath to create one ridiculously long phrase. He really lays back the first time he does it, and the time almost gets away from him. He does the same trick on the final A of the tune (with more secure time), and then uses the "lookey-here now" interjection as a kind of climatic tag. Nice arrangement, too, and the pianist plays some hip shit starting in the second bridge. Another interesting detail is that in that final A, Sinatra unbottons his jacket and flips open his collar as he sings, "My hearts on fire/with one desire." That's obviously a deliberate gesture; a tiny but effective piece of theater.

The Public Editor of the New York Times devoted his column today to the blog post about Hank's final residence: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30pubed.html

I actually prefer the Venus disc to the latest one, though both are good. The version of "Tea for Two" on the earlier recording is a knock-out. Lots of sound clips at her website ...

That and Griffin's first Argo LP are some of the best tenor sax debut albums ever recorded, IMHO. Not to sidetrack the thread, but Joe Henderson's "Page One" is the best I can think of in this class (and Henderson's earlier appearance on Kenny Dorham's "Una Mas" is just as remarkable, one of the greatest pure debuts ever in my opinion) -- his mature voice was there right from the starter's gun of his recording career.

Here's a list of Verve's Spoken Word, International Series, which includes their original comedy releases. http://www.jazzdisco.org/verve-records/catalog-spoken-word-international-series/album-index/ For what it's worth, the most comprehensive Comedy discography I've seen is called "Laughter on Record: A Comedy Discography" by Warren Debenham, published by the Scarecrow Press in 1988. http://www.amazon.com/Laughter-Record-Discography-Warren-Debenham/dp/0810820943/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274614800&sr=1-1 It's quite remarkable. 4,367 listings -- from A&P Players' "I Love Jimmy Carter, Jimy Carter" (A&P AP-1001) to Ziegfeld's "Ziegfeld Girl." (C.I.F. 3006;two comedy cuts). It's also indexed by subject, which is interesting. Sample topics under O: Occupations - blue-coller workers - business - firemen Off-Key Singing Old Age - old men - old women - retirement homes - retirement party - romance Opera - Carmen Outer Space (See also astronauts; Star Trek) The book doesn't include CDs and it's not annotated, but if you're interested in knowing what's out there, it has it all.

Detroit Free Press obituary posted this afternoon. http://www.freep.com/article/20100517/ENT04/100517032/1320/Legendary-jazz-pianist-Hank-Jones-dies

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/arts/music/15rio.html?ref=obituaries Remarkable obituary of a celebrated organist for silent movies, radio and TV

Thanks for the additional details, though, yes, the recording details are on the back of my box too.

I've just come into a 5-LP box, "The Father of Modern Jazz Piano" on the M.F. Productions label. If there was a booklet with the package originally, it's disappeared from my set. Anybody got more info on these records and whether they came out in other forms on other labels? Three of the LPs are solo and are just mind-blowingly great. All recorded in Chicago, Sept-Oct. 1977; other material from Dec. 1977 (New York) with Budd Johnson, Bill Pemberton and Oliver Jackson. A lot of the tracks are extended -- 7-10 minute versions of "The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else," "Just Friends," "East of the Sun," "Can't We Talk it Over," "Blues in Thirds." These are really wild rides. I've only recently started listening to these late solo recordings and they are rapidly becoming some of my favorite music. A lot of the attraction for me is that I think Hines was really a true improviser in the sense of playing things in performance that he literally had never played before -- like Sonny Rollins. In a sense, most players are basically editors, more or less re-arranging things they’ve practiced, with brief flashes of new ideas emerging from scratch. No shame in this, of course, because it's certainly a critical part of an improviser’s art, but it's not the same thing as the more elevated plane of literally inventing new stuff on the spot. I've always felt that Sonny was the ideal true improviser because when he’s on, he’s actually playing a ridiculously high percentage of ideas he’s never played before. I think late Hines is in that category and it's the fundamental source of why there's so much electricity in his playing and one of the reasons why he always sounds so damn modern. There are other reasons too that have to do with the way he addresses the piano, especially the active left hand, the way he spreads the rhythm out between the two hands, the bursts of spontaneous counterpoint and single notes and jabbing chords (bebop!) while always letting his right hand carry the linear invention. The harmonic sense is very sophisticated and he's always swinging! While he'll play his left hand on all four beats at times and hook into a modified stride but not for long and never in a way that weighs down the music. In a certain sense the assimilation of so much of the jazz piano history reminds me of Hank Jones, another player who stands outside of chronological time and style. Side note: Bill Charlap's Trio was in town for four nights this week and the topic of Hines' late solo playing came up briefly in a conversation I had with him last night. He said these performances always reminded him of Erroll Garner's introductions -- except that with Hines, the entire performances had that discursive, unpredictable quality. Anyway, any info on this M.F. Productions box would be appreciated.

While I do really try to live in the present, some things really were a lot better in the old days -- and one of them was jazz singing. The standards were so much higher just to get in the game. Holy cow, that's simply an amazing performance, especially, for me, the casual authority of the expression. I mean, everything is at the highest, most sophisticated musical level, but nothing is forced, and the genius doesn't preclude the populist appeal. In fact, it may enhance it. Thanks for posting.

Those are some mouth watering gigs for sure. I almost fell off my chair when I read those on Ellery's site years ago. I talked to Joel Dorn numerous times when he was going through the tapes as I was involved in the release of the Freddie Hubbard material. I definitely asked about some of the ones mentioned above and about certain artists in general and don't recall all his answers now. One big issue was clearances. If it involved big names like Hancock, Shorter, Tyner or Rollins then it was going to be too cost prohibitive for him to release. I was particularly intrigued with May 23, 1965: Herbie Hancock, Sam Rivers, Ron Carter, Tony Williams July 7, 1965: Roy Haynes, Wayner Shorter, Albert Dailey, Larry Ridley May 15, 1966: Freddie Hubbard, Hank Mobley, Ronnie Matthews, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones Dec. 4, 1966: Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette Especially the Shorter/Haynes thing but again this one would have been too cost prohibitive to release. There were also sound quality issues. Some were recorded much better then others. I remember asking about a Lee Morgan one and being told there was no bass audible on the recording. The rights reverted back to whomever licensed them to Dorn years ago. Someone else could license them and see what is there but the best ones are going to be costly to release. I have a program similar to Ellery's that I just acquired but this is a later one that lists concerts up to 12/15/74 There is nothing as jaw dropping as what is mentioned above but there is some interesting stuff. The Coltrane concert in question is still listed. Other stuff of interest Max Roach with Charles Tolliver and Odean Pope Art Blakey with Curtis Fuller back in the band with Woody Shaw 6/1/69 Lee Morgan with Billy Higgins subbing for Freddie Waits 1/24/71 Art Blakey with three tenor players Ramon Morris, Buddy Terry and Denny Marouse? 4/9/72 Art Blakey with Dizzy Reece 1/21/73 Elvin Jones with Hank Jones and Azar Lawrence and Steve Grossman 4/1/73 Thanks for the details. I get that there's a distinction between what may exist and what's releasable when you factor in payment cost for artists and sound quality issues. But I gather at this point that not even any unauthorized bootleg cassettes of any of the particularly mouth-watering gigs listed above have ever surfaced, correct?

Here's another Sonny Rollins question I've always wondered about. "The Standard Sonny Rollins" (RCA, 1964) contains some unbelievably great playing, but, of course, most of the tunes were intentionally kept short, either through fade-outs, edits or simply brief performances. It's frustrating, especially the fade-outs on, say, "Three Little Words" and "I'll Be Seeing You," where Sonny's inspiration is high and he sounds like he's about to play a zillion choruses but the tunes fade midstream after about two minutes. So, the question: Are there completely unedited masters somewhere of these sessions, where we might someday be able to hear all the incredible shit Sonny continued to play after the fade-outs? (I also wouldn't mind hearing the rest of Herbie Hancock's obviously edited piano solo on "It Could Happen to you.") Incidentally, when I was hanging around backstage after Sonny's concert in Detroit a couple weeks ago -- he sounded fantastic, by the way -- I heard him refer to this record as "one of my favorites" when somebody asked him to sign a copy. I meant to ask Sonny whose idea it was, his or producer George Avakian's, to program the record with short performances, fade-outs, etc., but I forgot.

As it happens, I saw Hal Galper tonight with his current trio in Ann Arbor and was able to ask him if he remembered the gig and if somebody taped it. The bad news: no tape. What was really funny, however, given the issues with the piano that folks have noted in this thread, was that when I asked if a tape exists he said, "I hope not! I hated that gig. It was a TERRIBLE piano. Everybody else could have fun and I had to suffer." 44 years later and that piano still bugs him.